Sensor startup closes $6.6 million VC round

LONDON  Sensor Platforms Inc., a fabless semiconductor company providing ICs to the sensor industry, has closed a $6.6 million round of venture funding.

The financing was led by ArrowPath Venture Partners and Newbury Ventures and the company said the money would be used to accelerate the market introduction of its interface IC for high volume sensor applications.

Sensor Platforms (Santa Rosa, Calif.) said it is targeting sensor application developers in the wireless, automotive, consumer electronics. These markets, dominated by MEMS (micro electro-mechanical systems) based sensor solutions, are now growing at double digit rates.

Bruce Bauer, co-founder of Newbury Ventures, said: “I was attracted by the highly proprietary nature of the Universal Smart Sensor Chip and the massive size and explosive growth rate of the sensor market that it enables. With each new sensor-based application, there is a corresponding need for a chip that will interface with the sensor and then process and condition its signal. The lack of a standard solution has always been a major “pain point” throughout the many industries involved in sensor application development.”